Dunedin's new $26.7 million, seven-year kerbside collection service will now provide for plastics 1-7, aluminium and steel cans, aerosol cans, aluminium trays and foil, paper and cardboard. Glass bottles still go into the old blue recycling bin.
Any other materials put into recycling bins is discarded from the sorting facility and sent to the Green Island landfill - significantly, at a cost of $115 per tonne.
It is hoped there will be less plastic going to landfill in either black bags or the private collector wheelie bins, enabling Dunedin to meet the New Zealand Waste Strategy target of reducing waste from 800kg per person per year to 720kg per person, and increasing recycling from 100kg per household per year to 150kg.
EnviroWay, a division of EnviroWaste, heads a four-strong consortium of contractors that won the bid to provide the Dunedin City Council's new collection service. The deal, announced in July, 2010, was originally set at $26 million, but increased by $700,000 because of a four-month extension of the contract, which now ends on June 30, 2018, and the addition of new collection areas.
Council staff earlier this year confirmed financing problems for one of the partners, Hall Bros, meant the new recycling plant next to the Green Island landfill had been delayed by up to four months.
That meant up to 2400 tonnes of non-glass recycling would be transported to Christchurch for sorting. Asked this week whether that arrangement had been affected by the Christchurch earthquake, Dunedin City Council solid waste manager Ian Featherston said the processing facility there had not been damaged, so that four-month transporting and processing period would not need to be delayed or extended beyond June 30 this year.
Mr Featherston said Dunedin's new "state-of-the-art" facility was designed for sorting mixed recyclable materials that contained no glass. Without glass in the material, paper and cardboard comprise about 70% by weight of the recycling. More plastics can be sorted, too, as the plant's capacity is much greater than the facility it replaces.
Maintenance costs were likely to be lower, leading to a lower overall operating cost at the plant. Under the new contract, any income from the sale of recyclables would "ideally" go towards maintaining the kerbside collection rate charge of $63 for each of the next seven years.
Last year, Dunedin City Council contractor Transpacific Industries collected 7281 tonnes of recyclable material, of which 99% (7194 tonnes) was sold to domestic and international recycling companies.
Had that 7281 tonnes of recyclables been sent to a landfill, it would have cost $837,000 to dispose of; instead, it generated an estimated* $1.1 million in revenue, Mr Featherston says, pointing out that the recycling service was thus cost-effective. However, the age of the recycling plant had required major expenditure to keep it running until the new collection service was decided.
(* Under the current contract, the value of the recyclables is not reported by the contractor; the new contract will require this.)
"The cost of the service for 2010 is based on the current system, which charged $34 per household, collecting plastics 1-2 bottles only, cardboard, newspaper and cans. The new system will collect more as plastics 1-7 are covered by the $63 charge next year so we will have to wait until this time next year to analyse," Mr Featherston said.
